A car loans after a bankruptcy is one way to help build back your credit history. In fact, once your bankruptcy closes, you can apply for a car loan the next day. To get approved with the best rates for your car loan, follow these tips.

Review Your Credit Report

Before you start applying for a car loan, check out your credit report and make sure all your accounts are in order. It is not uncommon after a bankruptcy to see open accounts that should be closed, which hurt your credit rating.

While looking at your credit report, consider adding a page explaining the situation that resulted in your bankruptcy. If there were extenuating circumstances, lenders may approve you for a better rate than under normal conditions.

Plan Your Car Purchase

Before purchasing a vehicle, decide what you can afford in a monthly car loan payment. This will help you decide which financing package is best for you. Both the loan amount and length of payments will determine your monthly payments, so there is flexibility in determining which vehicle you can afford to purchase.

Use A Car Loan Lender

Car loan lenders make their money by finding you a loan. Car loan lenders work with several financing partners to back loans with all types of credit risk, including bankruptcies.

Online car loan lenders deal with thousands of loans, and can usually find you a better deal than your local car dealerships. Online car loan lenders will send you a check when you are approved, basically making you a pre-approved car loan buyer.

Explain Your Situation

Car loan applications will ask if you have ever declared bankruptcy and why. This is your chance to explain what led up to the situation and what steps you have taken to resolve your credit situation. Be sure to include improvements in your financial history too.

Consider Refinancing

Once you are approved for a car loan, keep your eye on future refinancing. By making regular payments on all your bills, in a year’s time you could qualify for significantly lower interest rates. In three years, you can build your credit score to near excellent and qualify for even lower rates.

To view our list of recommended auto loan companies online, visit this page:
Recommended Auto Loan
Companies Online.

Bad news is rife in the world of business and employment today. It’s a fact of life as companies struggle to get to grips with the subdued economy. If you’re managing or supervising staff, there’s a fair chance you’ll find yourself delivering unsavoury news to your team at one point or another, and how you choose to communicate that news can make a huge difference.

“No one ever wants to receive bad news, and no one wants to communicate it either,” says business communications specialist Lynn Gaertner-Johnston. “It is a huge communication challenge that requires great care, especially if the news is upsetting rather than merely inconvenient.”

Breaking such news can be a nerve racking and difficult experience for even the most seasoned business communicator, but if you find yourself passing on bad tidings at work consider following some of these tips to help ease the pain:

Use multiple channels: don’t just focus on e-mail. E-mail tends to be a cold and sterile medium, unfeeling and stark. While e-mail may well be the most efficient communication tool, you should try to augment it with other, more personal channels of communication. Pick up the phone, arrange a person-to-person meetings or organise an online meetings or video conference to add a more personal and caring element to the message. Keep people updated: there’s nothing worse than dropping a bombshell of an announcement and then clamming up. Keep the information flowing, provide frequent updates and volunteer additional information as it becomes available. People tend to take bad news on-board gradually, but once the central message sinks in they’ll be looking for more information. Be sure to provide it if you can. Don’t try to hide it: shielding people from bad news by concealing it is always a bad move. When the inevitable happens and the news leaks out, the fallout will be far worse. Be open, honest and up front about the reality of the situation. Don’t delay: sitting on the fence isn’t a particularly clever strategy when it comes to delivering bad news. When the news does break the fact that you knew about it for some time before passing it on will erode trust and raise suspicion about your motives. The trust of your team is hard won and crucial to your success… don’t jeopardise it. Be professional: use appropriate language tailored to your audience, and always be professional. Take particular care before deciding to use emoticons like frowning faces and slang terms. Temper the message: if you can do so legitimately, try and include a snippet of good news to soften the blow. Downsizing a department is very bad news for some, of course, but if it ultimately saves people’s jobs and makes the company more viable that’s good. Don’t gloss over the negatives: while highlighting a positive aspect or outcome is a good thing, don’t attempt to disguise the negative message with positive language and corporate “spin” for the sake of it. Bad news doesn’t become any sweeter with a saccharine veneer.

Don’t forget to look out for part two of this article for more tips to help you deliver bad news more effectively.

(Inspired by an entry in Lynn Gaertner-Johnston’s excellent Better Writing at Work newsletter)

Tax breaks and having a tangible investment are only some of the incentives attributed to purchasing your own home. There are plenty of reasons to choose buying a new home over renting. After you’ve decided that buying a new home is the right plan for your life, here are some things to consider before launching this grand investment.

Whether or not you can afford a house is an important factor to consider. Several first time home buyers must take into account how much of a down payment can be made on the house as well as how much of a loan he or she can be approved for. This applies to you as well as it is an extremely common conundrum. Your investment in a home should never exceed 28% of your annual income, and this investment doesn’t just include the house itself. This also includes property taxes, insurance, mortgage payments, agency costs, etc. That being said, you should really evaluate your financial situation before signing any sort of contract when buying a new home.

Coinciding with an evaluation of your finances is an assessment of your overall debts before buying a new home. Eliminating credit card debt, paying off that new car, and sizing down your student loan will help when saving for your down payment. High interest debts can build a wall between you and your dream home, so knock it down while you still can. Investing in something substantial like a new home can hurt you financially if you have increasing debts behind you.

After taking into consideration your financial situation before buying a new home, you can start researching real estate agents and expediting your purchase of a new home.

IS IT TRUE? WILL THE RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE BE TAXED 3.8% AS PART OF HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL?

Recently, a friend of mine mentioned that the new health care reform bill was going to include a 3.8% sales tax on the sale of homes. I think I blurted out, “you’ve got to be kidding me!”  Of course, I had to come home and research the details.

Before I got to doing the research, I had all kinds of expletives circled around in my head. Thankfully, they stayed inside there. Other thoughts included; could our leaders in Washington really be that stupid? Hasn’t the housing industry already gone through enough trauma? Why would Washington want to kill the real estate business and therefore the economy?

My research did verify the new health care reform bill does in fact have a provision to charge 3.8% sales tax on the sale of homes, but there is much more to it than that though. The 3.8% real estate sales tax only applies to single tax payers making more than $200,000 or joint taxer payers making more than $250,000 AND you wouldn’t pay on the first $250,00 in profits for a single tax payer or $500,000 in profits for a joint tax payer.

Whew…I was worried there for a minute.  All the residential real estate I own has dropped 40-50% in value so no need to worry about profits. For many us real estate types, it will be many years (if ever) before we work off carry forward losses from real estate activities of the last several years, so income thresholds aren’t an issue either.

My friend made it sound like it was a straight dollar for dollar 3.8% sales tax, which would have been the single stupidest thing Washington could have done since the beginning of the republic. I am never glad to hear Washington is tinkering with the market in which I earn my living, but I am glad to know that this 3.8% sales tax only applies to profits over 500k for joint filers. The 500K profit threshold pretty much eliminates most home sales unless the homes are selling for millions of dollars, which is a very small percentage of homes.

I think the potential bigger issue may be commercial properties owners where buildings that cost millions of dollars could easily appreciate a small percentage but increase in value $250K or $500K in net terms. The year you report the sale, your income would be increased by the net profit from the sale of the building.  For example, a retired couple on a fixed income could sell a commercial property from a business they once owned. Even though the couple is on a relatively small fixed income, the sale of the building would trigger them into the 250K income class when the profit of the sale exceeds 750K. Again, this might not happen that often, but one thing we know for sure…Washington put the provision in to raise revenues and that it will.

Case studies show that one of the primary reasons for small business failure is the lack of poor management tools and techniques. When it comes to the accounting and financial reporting, business owners are more successful when there is a set of procedures to follow. This article provides five steps to management accounting to ensure that you get good results from financial reports.

Step 1: Source Documents. A lot of business owners have a habit of making purchases and failing to keep their receipts. But an important part of accounting is maintaining source documents. They are a vital piece of the financial puzzle because they tell you what, where, when, why, and how money flows in and out of your company.

Step 2: Accounting Systems. The receipts that you have should be recorded for better management. Use an accounting system to help you accomplish this task. There are three types of accounting systems that you can use. Depending upon your preference and the level of complexity for reporting needs in your business you may select from a manual, spreadsheet, or an accounting software to fit your needs.

Step 3: Financial Reports. After entering the financial transactions for your business the next step is to create financial reports. The type of financial reports that owners use in business varies. At minimum you should produce a Balance Sheet, Income Statement, and Statement of Cash Flows each period.

Step 4: Management Review. Your financial reports will give you an account of the progress you are making in business. Each report provides different information to help you assess the financial decisions and how they impact overall performance. For example, the Balance Sheet can provide answers such as: How much cash is available?; How much debt is the company carrying?; and What is the net worth of the business? Likewise, the Income Statement and Statement of Cash Flows illustrate the details to address questions that involve business growth and sources and uses of cash.

Step 5: Course Adjustments. It is common for business owners to take action using your “gut instinct.” This is where you have a strong feeling for how well or poorly you have performed without having numbers to back up your assumptions. But when you take a look at the actual data it can be an eye-opening experience. Use the results from financial reports to leverage opportunities to improve and grow. Remember to establish measures and track progress over time to see how assumptions and decisions impact sales, expenses, and the bottom line.

To learn more about accounting and financial reporting in business I invite you to sign up for my free monthly newsletter at http://www.tbsusa.com.

As women, especially as married female entrepreneurs, we often struggle with making money because we believe that we can’t increase our income or manage our money very effectively. And if we’re currently carrying debt we tend to think that we’re doomed to be in debt for the rest of our lives, because we don’t feel competent about getting out of debt.

If you have been struggling with debt for a while, it’s likely you hold the belief that you are powerless to change your situation. As a result you feel negative about yourself. You start to feel incompetent. And then you begin to feel stuck, bitter and resentful. This has an impact in other areas of your life because you don’t feel motivated about building your business or hopeful about career options.

Money issues are often a reflection of self-esteem and self-worth.

“If you look closely, you will discover that you don’t necessarily get what you deserve in life but instead you get no more and no less than what you actually believe you deserve. Only to the degree that you appreciate your innate human worthiness will your subconscious mind open up to life’s bounty. Success involves talent, effort and creativity, but first of all it requires a willingness to receive.” Those words were written and shared by Dan Millman in Everyday Enlightenment.

An exercise that you can do is to imagine that you are walking up to the ocean. Pretend that the ocean represents everything that is available to you; prosperity, abundance and having more money. As you walk towards the ocean imagine that you are bringing a container with you to collect all the prosperity and abundance that is available to you. Now look down and notice the size of container you are carrying with you to receive this prosperity. Are you carrying a thimble or are you bringing with you a huge bucket? How large is your container?

Ram Das shared in one of his lectures, ” The rain may pour down from the heavens but if you only hold up a thimble, a thimble full is all you will receive.”

You can tell the size of the container that you are holding by your internal beliefs and actions. As you experience increased self-worth around money you will begin to charge more for your services and if you are carrying debt you will begin to take the actions steps you need to get out of debt. And finally you will no longer accept any excuse as being a reason why you can’t build wealth – because building wealth is your divine birthright.

Many people find it a big burden to be taking a home loan and having to pay mortgage for a number of years. Similarly many others would like to avoid thinking about insurance. Having to think of taking policy and paying annual premiums all through major part of their lives is not something everyone looks forward to.

Today you may not think of insurance for your self. But when you have a family, children and a home, you will have to think of providing for their health care, children’s education as well as home loan payments. God forbid, in case something were to happen to you what happens to your family and who will pay for your recovery and keep the boat sailing. Well the answer is: Your Insurance will pay for all this.

You should be equipped with a little bit more knowledge of the various insurance policies to help you choose the right one for you.

Do not make a mistake of signing for a insurance policy because you get a good discount and the premium is low. Understand what the policy has to offer and weigh its benefits Vs disadvantages before you go ahead.

Before singing up for the policy you should be clear of the policy offering. You need to read and understand all the conditions stipulated in the policy document along with the inclusions, exclusions and riders, which are given in fine print. This is what people miss out on most of the times and stand to suffer later.

We come across most of people getting upset with the insurance companies and dragging them to court and litigation for not paying their claims. They do not realize that they are at fault for not having read the fine prints in policy before signing up and now company cannot be held responsible for their loss.

Before buying the policy check out the options available with additional riders and risk coverage against your policy. Many times insurance companies allow you to add on substantial cover for a small increase in premium depending upon the category of risk. Ask your agency for all details and then take your decision.

Based on your income, your liabilities, assets and your age, your children’s age etc, the insurance consultant would be able to help you draw up a plan to cover life insurance, health, education, home, assets, car as well as other important risks coupled with savings too. Insurance is a long-term investment and hence it is important that you work out all in detail with professional help.

Were you a passive financial partner in your relationship? Did you leave paying the bills, finding the best mortgage deal and pension planning to your significant other?

Recent research in the UK undertaken by the Department of Work and Pensions highlighted that many of single women over fifty suddenly have to deal with the financial affairs and paperwork that their partners took care of while they were married and have to deal with money issues they have never tackled before.

Learning how to budget is therefore something many women have to get to grips with after divorce, the death of their partner or the breakdown of a relationship.

Here is a personal budgeting strategy that works for me and I am sure it will for you too.

You will need to set up two bank accounts which you can do from the same bank. I call mine Number One and Number Two account Arrange to have your salary/wages/pension/income paid into your Number One account Put aside some time when you will not be disturbed and gather all the information you have about income and expenditure e.g. bank/credit/cards, salary, pension, savings, receipts etc. Make a list of your monthly expenditure, your fixed costs for example, food, utilities, mortgage/rent, Council Tax etc. Look back through bank/credit card / store cared statements to help you. Make another list of all your irregular expenses. For example car tax/insurance/maintenance, insurance, holidays and Christmas.Now divide the total by 12 and arrange a Direct Debit with your bank for this amount to be moved to your Number Two account each month. I also arranged a Direct Debit to a Savings account which I keep specifically for unexpected expenditure to cover emergencies. You know, the times when the washing machine or TV breaks down, root canal treatment looms at the dentist or the cooker blows up. You may find after a month or so there is something you have forgotten or you have under-estimated an aspect of your budget. That’s OK, just tweak your budget and make the necessary changes as it is important to ensure your budget is both accurate and realistic

Budget finance can feel scary when you have lost your, Personal Financial Advisor, Personal Banker and Personal Budget Manager all in one go. So do not worry about it and know that help is always available if you need it. You will be thrilled how much more confident you will feel once you have mastered money management budgeting.

The economic meltdown is revealing itself to be a series of events set off like dominoes cascading to their demise. The latest to fall informs us of issues regarding home foreclosures. Not only did foreclosures hit a record high in September 2010 but public awareness also peaked with inquiry into potential errors on the part of the banks.

I am not an expert on this subject but from recent study will attempt to give a basic overview of this vital personal-finance issue. Dubbed “foreclosure-gate” and “fraudclosure”, banks are “under the gun” by light that shines on their mortgage-banking practices. Due to reports of “robo”signers” (signing foreclosure documents without actually reading them), several large banks initiated temporary document-processing freezes.

A technical procedural misstep would be bad enough but, in fact, the robo-signing at issue diverts attention from the elephant in the board room: Systemic flaws.

The banking industry’s full-court-press homeownership advertising campaign of the early 2000′ lured countless Americans to become “true believers”. The mantra of “real estate would only go up” seemed to hypnotize the masses. Millions threw caution to the wind to exploit the real-estate gold rush.

On the front end, real estate agents and mortgage brokers gladly racked up larger-than-ever commissions and sometimes under-the-table lender bonuses; turning a blind eye to inflated income levels, fake home appraisals and other lies inserted in to mortgage underwriting documents. In turn, word on the street was “all systems go” to those who otherwise would never qualify for a loan.

The rest is history.

Time has proven that many of these financial products were really designed to benefit the financial sector, not the little guy. Wall Street bankers developed them while the government permitted them; a joyous joint venture!

Most real estate professionals knew full-well of their clients’ (often sub-prime) likely inability to repay over the long-term. Bottom line: A defaulting loan and a home in foreclosure were ultimately worth more money. However, the real estate bubble and collapse was just the tip of the iceberg.

At the heart of this story lies MERS the heretofore elusive brain-child of a group of elite bankers who in the early nineties aimed to streamline (speed up) the real-estate mortgage process thereby also avoiding traditional County Recorder title-recording fees.

MERSCorp Inc. (Mortgage Electronic Registration System) was incorporated in Delaware in 1995. MERSCorp Inc. functions as a legal pass-through electronic “conduit”, owns nothing and has no building or employees. Surprise surprise, shareholders listed on its website are some the usual suspects and largest beneficiaries of the TARP bailout and global revenue in general: Bank of America, Chase, CitiMortgage, Inc., Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, HSBC, SunTrust, and Wells Fargo.

Below is the best overview of MERS I could find by Christopher L. Peterson, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Law, University of Utah, S.J. Quinney College of Law.

“MERS operates a computer database designed to track servicing and ownership rights of mortgage loans anywhere in the United States. Originators and secondary market players pay membership dues and per-transaction fees to MERS in exchange for the right to use and access MERS records.

“But, in addition to keeping track of ownership and servicing rights, MERS has attempted to take on a different, more aggressive, legal role. When closing on home mortgages, mortgage lenders now often list MERS as the “mortgagee of record” on the paper mortgage-rather than the lender that is the actual mortgagee. The mortgage is then recorded with the county property recorder’s office under MERS, Inc.’s name, rather than the lender’s name-even though MERS does not solicit, fund, service, or ever actually own any mortgage loans. MERS then purports to remain the mortgagee for the life of a mortgage loan even after the original lender or a subsequent assignee transfers the loan into a pool of loans that are ultimately sold to investors-a process known as securitization. Although MERS is a young company, 60 million mortgage loans are registered on its system.” (Now 62 million in 2010 – ed.)

Some of these 62 million homeowners are extremely concerned about the implications of MERS showing as mortgagee of record. US lending laws state that only the owner of a loan can initiate a foreclosure and MERS cannot lawfully own mortgage loans! In addition, investors who purchased pools of bank loans called securitizations now question the accuracy of the ratings assigned to the loans at the time they purchased them. Plus, the legitimacy of the same loan pool sold over and over again to different investors is also under investigation.

Serious questions remain given how MERS private governance of the nation’s real property recording system quietly supplanted centuries-old property law without an act of Congress. To date, class-action lawsuits against MERS are pending in California, Georgia, Kentucky Nevada, and Arizona. Who knows, maybe big banks will be forced to let families stay in their homes as well as buy back deceptive loans they peddled to investors.

Should issues of incomplete and mis-information given to borrowers, lost hard-evidence of title ownership (broken chain-of title) and investor deception prove to be true; will such revelations serve to level the playing field between banks and the people?

Time will tell.

Some analysts say more likely to happen is that President Obama, sometime after the mid-term elections, will sign the very same executive order he pocket-vetoed on October 7 to make it more difficult for families to bring suit against the banks. This might include an official retroactive redemption of mortgage-banking sins and blessing going forward on MERS as the digital savior of the “old school” county-recording system of title.

October 20, 2010, in ABC News Today, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan said although reviews continue on foreclosure documentation problems regarding specific lenders and banks who might not be following the rules, there does not seem to be any “underlying systemic problems”.

If you believe this…I have a bridge I’d like to sell you!

So, your Home insurance is due, your kids are asking about summertime camp, and the dryer just went on the fritz. Why Does it always seem like the one thing you have in your life is bills? Maybe it’s time to bring the kids in on your family’s financial situation.

Although it can be embarrassing to have to admit to your children-people who rely on and admire you-that things are a bit tight right now, don’t overlook the possibility that this admittance can bring your kids on board to help save, and bring everyone together as a family working on an achievable outcome.

Not all kids will be able to handle financial affairs at the same time and it can also be hard to know when exactly they are ready to learn about money stuff. Very little children have almost no concept about money. They just know that it costs money to buy stuff, but how much that is or where that money comes from, many times is beyond the understanding of a child less then eight years.

Older children, and surprisingly teenagers, are an entirely different matter. They can many times tell when they are not being told the truth. They will also almost for certain already be mindful of tension in the household concerning financial matters. Letting them in on family finances communicates you have confidence in their capacity to think and join in what’s going on.

If you allow your children to engage in family budget planning, they may come up with plenty of ideas of their own that will surprise you. Their open minds and vivid imaginations, and their energy can be just the right mixture to help you get things moving in the right direction.

For example, they can price compare like crazy when they shop, sniffing out the best deals on groceries. Younger children can make a game out of clipping and saving each weeks coupons. Older teenagers may be inclined to pick up a part-time job, and make their own money.

The most important thing is to bring your kids in on your budget planning when they’re ready for it. Also make sure to introduce all financial affairs at the level they can comprehend money matters. The returns may really amaze you